ictchris

Get him on a forty year, Jim McLean style contract

Cup finals are games for winning. You have to win, that’s it. We won, thrillingly so. The performance was typical of this season in its limitations and positives. It says a lot that a 16 year old got into better positions, created more chances and threatened their goal more than than our three starying forwards did the entire match. Be interesting to see how we play Mckay for the rest of the season. I don’t think we can start him but he should be among the first ports of call from the bench. The management will have to take a call on how well he can cope with first team football physically - guys like Harry Cochrane are playing every week at his age. overall though, it was a great day, good to get some good feeling back in the club after some diabolical seasons.

The stuff about Harper being deliberately subbed off is typical of our club. We are an utter shambles, on and off the park. Someone said that if we go down the club will disintegrate, it's already disintegrating. The guys in charge have no idea what they are doing - Muirfield Mills are a group of ex-pats who wanted to stick some money into local sport and now they are running the club - they don't know what they are doing. I've been told a few things about the shambolic organisation of the club and it all rings true. We have a load of utter amateurs trying to administer the club, from the teamsheets, to the commercial side, to the finances, to player recruitment, to the pitch. A few years back someone told me that a former board member said about Terry Butcher "we've created a monster!" because he basically ran the club, ran the playing side, ran the scouting, did a huge amount of media. Since he left things have slipped - the success of the Hughes era (with Butchers players) hid it for a couple of years but once that fell away there was no disguising it. Robbo is a positive guy but he's not managed to take us from a good position a couple of months ago to anywhere near where we need to be. If we stay up, which I think is doubtful, we need to try, somehow, to get an investor in who can back us for two seasons to clear out the playing squad, employ a manager who can recruit players of value and develop those we need to keep and give the club some organisation. Sadly, it's doubtful we'll get any of that.

the way things are going our Highland derby next season will be with Peterhead.

Confirmed as McDairmid Park, Saturday 24th March, 4:15pm kick off.

Hilariously abysmal second half performance. Good to see more #contribution from Polworth, two assists.

If players are being paid “generally” at a certain level, that is their market value. TV deals with different kick off arrangements aren’t evidence that players are paid above their market value. TV deals are one component of what gives footballers their market value.

This is the least attended competition in Scottish football, it’s an age since we qualified for the semis, it’s live on television, kick off is at a terrible time, there’s going to be a tiny away support. It’s going to be a shocking crowd, no point in going all pearl clutchy about it.

I doubt that we train three hours a week but at the same time there is a big danger in over-training. I was reading an article about the new Leeds manager, Paul Heckingbottom. As part of his team he has performance analysts who try to tailor training sessions to the players levels - you can't play for 40+ games at your best level if you just train the same all the time and don't manage your recovery. Barnsley, where Heckingbottom had success, came from miles behind to get promoted from League One a few years back with a late season push. Here's the article actually - http://www.trainingground.guru/articles/why-nathan-winder-will-be-key-at-leeds-united

The reason we received compensation is because we had managers under contract. If we had contracts that specified we could pay them off with three months wages then we'd have had to release them for that, or less probably.

It isn't really rewarding failure - if you agree a contract with someone then you should honour it. We've made hundreds of thousands of pounds in the last 15 years from compensation paid to release our managers from their contracts.

So we haven't played any games, held any press conferences, signed any players or basically done anything for two weeks? What do people expect the Courier to write? That sounds fair enough to me - a Bond film would have coverage across the media but a single showing of a prize winning film at Eden Court is a specific local event.

When someone buys a copy of Charles' book something like this happens

We need to wait for the result of the Irish League Cup final.

Yeah, that was the point - the final two games were certainly gimmes against sides who couldn't be bothered.

County are in a bad position but I wouldn't be surprised to see them stay up. They have 13 games left and 10 of those will be against teams in the bottom six. They are on a terrible run (12 without a win) but have played top six teams in seven of those games. The teams they are really likely to be up against in the relegation fight are Dundee, Hamilton Accies and Partick Thistle. I'd say that Accies and Dundee have been significantly weakened in the transfer window - Accies have lost Michael Devlin, Greg Doherty and Darian Mackinnon, Dundee are down Jack Hendry and Scott Allan. County have done their usual and signed a lot of players - if at least a couple of those work out they could be boosted and it's hard to argue they've been weakened. I think the split does help teams who are marooned at the bottom - you get a chance to cut your rivals throats and peg them back and you also get games against teams that have basically chucked it for the season. Consider how awful we were last season yet we managed to win three of our last four games.

Looking forward to Jim White revealing a series of league clinching signings on Sky Sports News today.

Incidentally, in three of the four losses we've had since the first quarter of the season, we've had a red card in those games.

In the last five seasons fourth place in the Championship has had an average of 56 points. We've currently got 30 points from 23 games. If we go the rest of the season on that points per game rate we'll get 46 points. However, we had a terrible start to the season. So if you take our form since the first quarter of the season (24 points from 14 games), we'll finish on 52 points. I think that'll probably be enough to get fourth. We are entering an absolutely crucial part of the season though - our next three league games are Dundee Utd (h), Dunfermline (a) and Morton (h), depending on this Crusaders pish. I think we really to win two of those games minimum to really put ourselves in the driving seat for a play off, especailly the games against Morton and the Pars, two of our direct play-off rivals.

That was a pretty odd game. We started Trafford and played him with Seedorf and Chalmers in midfield and started really well, we made all the running and, as I see a Falkirk fan noted, Oakley dominating the home centre halves. We didn’t create that much though and slowly Falkirk came back into the game, forcing Ridgers into a good save before Mulroney had his meltdown. It was utterly bizarre, he conceded a foul and got booked then immediately went through Longridge before kicking out at someone a few seconds later. He literally got booked twice in two minutes and walked off, it was like he wanted to get sent off. Really odd. After that we were really up against it. We organised to a kind of 4-3-1-1 but it was clear that we were going to be sitting back. Not much use in giving away stupid penalties if that’s your game plan but that’s what we did, both looked really daft fouls from Seedorf. We also gave away a string of free kicks around our own area through the game and didn’t offer a thing going forward. A really depressing showing. There was a momentary bright spot when we subbed in a couple of young lads and they combined for a good goal - Jack Brown picked the ball up in midfield, made a strong run and played it to Daniel Mckay, who held off the defender, made space and finished well., our best attack of the whole day. Overall, deserved win for Falkirk and one we need to write off as a bad afternoon and get back to our prior form.

Robertson said a few weeks ago that he was targeting three signings in the window, although he said that he wasn't going for midfielders. We've signed Austin and no-one else.

We need to go for an innovative 4-0-6 formation. Constant long balls up to a front line of Doran, Baird, Austin, Oakley, Bell and Mulraney.

I just looked up the HFL v SPFL results in the Scottish cup for the three seasons before this one, HFL have done a lot better this season than previously. HFL wins - 3 HFL goals - 16 Draws - 2 SPFL wins - 14 SPFL goals - 40

East Fife played Brora Rangers a few years back in the Challenge Cup and needed a late winner from our own Nathan Austin to go through - I doubt any clubs in the lower end of the league are in any doubt as to how good the well funded Highland League clubs are. East Fife also have Kyle Wilkie, who played a season in the HFL for Nairn. In this season's Scottish cup the HFL v SPFL record is as follows HFL wins - 4 HFL goals - 8 SPFL wins - 2 SPFL goals - 8 (Keith 0 Clyde 3 / Airdrie 2 Cove 3 / Buckie 2 Brechin 3 /Formartine 1 Forfar 0 / Stranraer 0 Brora 1 / East Fife 0 Brora 1) Here's hoping Fraserburgh add to the HFL win tally on the 31st.

Interesting start to the day with our selection, Trafford and Doran in for Polworth and Mulraney. Not sure why Polworth was dropped, maybe we expected to need to defend more in the centre of the park. Notwithstanding the changes, we started pretty well, moving the ball around and getting into good positions to get the ball into the box while not creating a great deal. Around the 15th minute we opened the scoring when a long throw on the right by Brad Mckay found its way to Doran, who fired home. From what I could see it was a bit of a defensive mix up from Dundee but a good finish from Doran, who had a great game. Following this, Dundee really took control though and dominated most of the rest of the half. They dominated midfield, with Trafford giving the ball away on a lot and Vigurs unable to really assert any control. Dundee carved out three fantastic chances in this period - one was blocked by a great tackle from Mckay, the other saved by Ridgers and the third headed into the bar by Trafford on the line. When half time came we were really just happy to get in with our lead intact but we should’ve doubled it right in the half when Doran slipped Oakley right through in goal. He should’ve done better but I thought he took it too wide and his effort was saved. It was good to get in at half time still ahead but that evaporated about a minute into the half -Dundee moved the ball well to the edge of th box and then the deflected shot beat Ridgers. A bit gutting but we came back well and a minute or so later Trafford crossed for Bell to force a fantastic save from theIr keeper, I’m stunned that he made it across to get a very well placed header. Dundee took the lead a few minutes later when Vigurs had a pass intercepted by O’Hara who ran it in and hit a low shot into the net. Vigurs has been dominating games in the Championship but the margin for error is less against better sides and he was punished for it. We rallied after this and pushed forward again. Trafford was subbed after a bad head knock in an accidental collision and Polworth came on to and had a couple of decent efforts. We managed to equalise when Calder made some decent running on the left, his cross was knocked into the air and Oakley reacted first to stab it home. We managed to create one final chance when Doran was almost out free in literally the last second of the game but he couldn’t get a meaningful shot away. For Dundee, I thought their midfield was excellent, O’Hara and Allen were influential and hurt us. The right back Kerr was also good. I thought Doran was our best player, he was threatening and popped up all over. We didn’t manage to establish dominance in midfield, Trafford didn’t do all that well and Vigurs, despite some good passes,, was a lot less in control than he is in the league and he got caught for the second Dundee goal. Donaldson was excellent again and Oakley took his goal well.